Polydrug Use:
Recreational Drug Use
Aidan
2/10/2007
Disclaimer: The more I hear about drug combinations in the internet, the more
startled I am by the lack of judgment some people have. On the other side of the coin, there's a
bit of stigma attached with mixing substances for many people. I would like to give some input
on the topic that may be informative. What follows is based on my own ‘research’, which
includes data from me, anecdotes from friends and my limited medical knowledge. I do not
have any credentials, but what I describe has worked well for me. Illegal drugs are, in most
cases, barely studied at all, let alone in conjunction with other substances.
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Table of Contents
Chapter I: Intro To Polydrug Use .............................. 3
Combinations................................................................................................................................ 3
Chapter II: Understanding Drug Properties ............. 2
Know Your Dose ........................................................................................................................... 2
Potentiation and Counteraction ................................................................................................... 3
Improving Negative Drug Experiences…………………………………………………………………………………….3
Chapter III: Time to Have Fun ..................................................................4
Chapter IV: Moving Beyond the Basics………………….4
Chapter V: Helpful Hints....……………………………………5
Chapter VI: Experimenting……………………………………6
Chapter I:
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Intro to Polydrug Use
Combinations
The more I hear about drug combinations in the internet, the more startled I am
by the lack of judgment some people have. On the other side of the coin, there's a bit of
stigma attached with mixing substances for many people. I would like to give some input
on the topic that may be informative. Combining psychoactive substances in
underexplored ways is very much like being able to cook or mix drinks without a recipe.
You can make some damn good food by following a recipe, but you will miss many other
things that take solid knowledge of your ingredients and an adventurous outlook. The
same goes for mixing drugs--the common ones are pretty fun, no doubt, but there's
much more there to be discovered. However, also like cooking or mixing drinks, some
things just do not go together. If someone decided to make you a Pernod and coke on a
whim, you would wonder what they were thinking (Pernod is liquorices flavored
alcohol). Likewise, when I hear about people combining mdma, cocaine, adderall and
ketamine, or three tryptamine RCs, 2 phenethylamine RCs and a fifth of vodka, I wonder
what is going on in their minds that made them think that would be a good idea.
Edit: adderall + valium is actually a good combination that's stimulating but not high
strung if you get the dose right, I don't know why I used it as silly combination example.
Chapter II:
Understanding Drug Properties
Know your dose
These three words are to live by. Educated dosing would have prevented the
vast majority of drug overdoses. Speedballing is deadly, not due to a strain on your
heart (cocaine or methamphetamine alone strain it much more), but because the
stimulant masks the depressant's effects. Problems start to arise when a deadly dose of
depressants is ingested unwittingly. Your body can only take so much, whether or not
you can feel the differences. To example the health issues with speedballing, note that
valium overdoses are treated with stimulants, and methamphetamine overdose
patients are given a depressant such as the benzodiazepine Ativan. So invest in good
scales, read up on Erowid’s dosage guides, and know your personal limits, and you have
a much better chance of surviving drug use than most
Potentiation and Counteraction
Opposite classes of drugs tend to counteract each other, and drugs of the same
class tend to potentiate each other. Thus, one must be very careful to keep the dose low
if combining multiple drugs of the same class with each other. Drinking heavily on
barbituates will kill you in a hurry, and drinking heavily with benzodiazepines or opiates
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is not either. Planning on railing a fat line of cocaine while on ecstasy? Your heart is
going to hate you for it. Tripping on multiple hallucinogens at once can get intense in a
hurry.
Improving a Negative Drug Experience
Here you need to think what your goal is. Are you too stimulated and
need sleep? Are you about to pass out in public due to sedation? Has a trip
turned sour? Once you know what you want, think about what can get you
there. Benzodiazepines are very effective in counteracting the effects of
stimulants. Marijuana and Benadryl can ease nausea. Opiates and barbituates
can counter excess stimulation as well. Once you have an idea of what to take,
research it. Rxlist.com lists known contraindications for prescription medicines,
and Erowid's health sections are good starting points. Experience vaults at rowed
can also provide some information from other people who've combined the
same things. Finally, proceed with caution. If your heart is racing unbearably, do
not go and take 4mg of Xanax and drink. Start low and work up gradually until
you have eased your symptom, then be thankful you ended a bad experience
and do not try to get fucked up in the other direction.
Chapter III
Time to Have Fun
Now the meaty part, how to have a good time by combining substances. When
planning a mix, the first step is to choose the core experience you're looking for. Do you
want to trip? Roll? Relax? Be stimulated? Have an out of body experience? You can't
have all of them at once, or even two of them together in many cases. If choosing one
core substance, the highest relative dose you take should produce your desired core
experience. If using two substances to reach your core experience, dosage should, in
most cases, be lowered.
Now that you have got your core experience picked out (we will chose rolling), you
get to decide how you want to accent it. By accenting your core experience with lower
doses of drugs from other classes, you can produce infinite shades of experience. LSD +
MDMA are a popular combination, but there are many variations within this 2substance combo. When two drugs are both in effect, one tends to dominate over the
other. A higher relative dose will generally dominate, but doses being equivalent, one
will still dominate the experience.
Since our core experience is rolling, and LSD tends to override MDMA in equal
doses, we will want a low dose of LSD and a higher dose of MDMA. The MDMA
dominate and the roll will take on shades of a trip. This experience is much different
than if we had chosen tripping as our core, in which case the higher or equal dose of LSD
would produce a tripping experience with shades of happiness and euphoria from the
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MDMA. There you have it; you have just combined two drugs safely to produce a unique
and rewarding experience.
Chapter IV
Moving Beyond the Basics
Once you get the basics down, you can try stuff a little more off beat and complex.
Remember, for every drug you ingest of the same class (though primarily stimulants and
depressants) you need to lower the dosage of all other drugs from the same class. If
you've already taken the other substances and can't lower the dose, consider saving the
combination for another day when you're more prepared. I will give some examples and
the thought behind them.
2.5 pills containing MDMA and
0.5mg Xanax
7.5mg hydrocodone
0.6g marijuana
3 alcohol beverages
Note the core experience, rolling. The accent chosen is primarily depressant with a
dash of hallucinogen to accompany MDMA's own dash of hallucinogen. The dosage is
highest in the core experience and low for each of the three depressants as they
potentiate one another's effects.
The benzodiazepine brought down the mental aspect of MDMA while increasing
the euphoria and the opiate decreased the desire to talk while also increasing euphoria.
The result was a roll with an emphasis on body euphoria over emotional openness and
sociability. The depressants eased the come down into sleep easily, and none was taken
in risky quantity. However, side effects tend to be additive, and the short-term memory
loss of Xanax, mdma, alcohol and marijuana combine to obliterate the recollection of
anything occurring more than 10 seconds in the past. Now let us have one that has
some flaws in it.
80mg MDMA insufflated
20mg valium
20mg hydrocodone
Some marijuana
2 alcoholic beverages
Here the desired core experience is hard to distinguish. It appears to be
depressant oriented, with two depressant classes in the low-recreational dose range,
and another slightly below it. However, 80mg of MDMA insufflated is not an accenting
dose.
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The result was an experience that, while highly euphoric, seemed to pass by in an
extremely disoriented and confusing 5 minutes rather than the 1.5 hours the peak
actually lasted. With no clear dominant, the combination becomes muddled and
overwhelming. A good adjustment to this would be to cut the MDMA dose roughly in
half, cut the valium and hydrocodone dose either in half, or to simply drop one of the
depressants altogether.
Chapter V
Helpful Hints
Dosage levels matter.
The same combination of substances at different dosage levels can
produce very different effects .
Timing matters.
A good rule is that the farther into your drug-experience that you are, the more
you should be leaning towards a depressant-dominated experience. In addition, keep in
mind the duration of each substance...MDMA may dominate an LSD trip during MDMA's
peak, but when you come down from the MDMA the LSD may still be going strong.
Route of ingestion matters.
The route of ingestion you decide on impacts the duration and intensity of what
you are ingesting. You can use this to your advantage, for instance, insufflation of the
primary substance will shorten the core experience, allowing a smooth transition into a
come down dominated by an entirely different class.
Weed is safe to combine with anything else..
Nitrous will intensify hallucinogens.
Be very very careful combining alcohol with barbituates.
IE you are better off not unless you are very confident in your judgment.
Deleriants are best experienced by themselves.
Combining two substances that are very similar is not very
exciting.
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Taking Valium + Xanax is not any more fun than simply taking a higher dose of
one or the other. I wouldn't want to combine 2C-I with Mescaline because there's too
much overlap. You want your combination to broaden the experience, not leave it
unchanged.
Body highs are additive across drug classes.
The more substances you have ingested that give a body high, the better the
body high will feel (within reason). Taking opiates on ecstasy gives extremely intense
body euphoria, for instance.
Chapter VI
Going Further
The moral of the story is that knowledge is power. The more you know, the safer
your drug (ab)use can be, and the more likely you are to have a rewarding and
responsible experience. The better your feel for the different subtle variations between
substances, the better your feel will be for combining them to produce the desired
effect.
Just as you cannot throw together gin, vodka, rum and whiskey together in equal
parts and expect it to taste pleasant, you cannot throw drugs randomly into your body
in equal parts and expect it to feel pleasant. With a little practice, instead you'll combine
orange juice, pineapple juice, peach schnapps, blackberry schnapps, white rum and
raspberry syrup in careful proportions, and end up with a tasty drink (it is good, by the
way).
That ended up being much longer, much less organized and I think much less
useful than I had anticipated. It did give me something to do though, and if it is not
helpful to anyone, it will fade off the front page in a hurry.